§ Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHYasked the Secretary of State for India whether the chairman of the Indian Newspaper Company, Limited, in his cable informed the right hon. Gentleman that the directors of the company had made a careful inquiry into the allegation that the paper which Mr. Horniman edited had been distributed free to British troops in the hope of exciting insubordination, and found it to be absolutely without foundation, and that the board of directors had ascertained that no copy of the " Bombay Chronicle " was distributed free to the British troops in Bombay; whether to say merely that the chairman of the board of directors of the Indian Newspaper Company denied all knowledge of the free distribution to British troops is a proper description of this categorical and authori- 2270W tative refutation of the charge; and whether, in such circumstances, he will make public the evidence on which his assertion that there was such free distribution is based?
§ Mr. MONTAGUThe terms of the cable message were as quoted by the hon. and gallant Member. I accepted the assurance as far as I could. But the directors were not in a position to say that distribution had not taken place. All that they could say was that they were in no way connected with what I believe to have occurred. The evidence I have is, to my mind, indisputable that some reader of the paper did distribute it to British troops in the Bombay Presidency.